The present invention relates to a multicore fiber and a method of manufacturing the multicore fiber, which are suitable for the case where an alignment of optical axes is facilitated.
Presently, an optical fiber for use in optical fiber communication systems, which are generally popular, is in a structure in which one core is enclosed with a cladding, in which an optical signal is propagated through the inside of the core and information is transmitted.
In the optical fiber communication system in these years, a large number of from a few tens to a few hundreds of optical fibers are used, and the amount of information for transmission is dramatically increased. In order to decrease the number of optical fibers in such an optical fiber communication system, a multicore fiber is proposed in which a plurality of cores is enclosed with a cladding.
For example, in a multicore fiber described in Patent Document 1 below, 16 cores are enclosed with a cladding, and a flat external portion is formed on the external form of the cladding. This multicore fiber is manufactured in which a flat external portion is formed on a part of the external form of a multicore fiber preform and the multicore fiber preform is drawn.
[Patent Document 1] JP-A-2013-72963